Balladic
by Aiko Isari
Summary: [AU, Tamers] Her life was not worthy of a song, but she could not explain this to the creature before her. He lived to be in a song, to die in one. But she would be lonely if he died. Warnings inside.
1. Episode One

_**A/N:** _Hi everybody! First new story, the second will be up after I finish the next chapter. This is a Tamers AU that operates under the premise of: "What if **Juri** was older when her mother died?" a challenge from my buddy remi. So I rolled with it. I'm not sure how far into the series I'm going to go, so we shall see what happens.

Warnings: Canonical character death, grief, violence, possible swearing, possibly more. Will warn in chapters when it appears.

* * *

Episode One

The month before her fifth grade year, Katou Juri saw her mother's corpse.

The doctors had hidden her face, but Juri had held those frail hands many more times in the past six months than she probably needed to. She knew each tiny imperfection and line. She knew each remnant of a blood stain or a tissue fiber. Now, she just stared at their limp selves, unable to speak, barely to continue breathing.

_Mama?_

It wasn't that she didn't understand. Her mother had always been sick, before she was born, her photographs had caused her to appear shrunken, out of place with the rest of the happy, healthy children in school. Always a doll next to her bulk of a husband, and always an outline to her bright daughter. It had grown worse, that fragility of sickness, in the past few years.

So, in some logical, even primal part of her conscious, Juri understood very well. That part may even be relieved.

But this... this was her mother. This was the woman who had made the hand puppet she still carried in her backpack. This was the mother who giggled at bubbles even though she was older than her, and couldn't carry things across rooms because she was a bigger klutz than her own daughter, and sometimes had gotten paper cuts on chapter books because she wasn't careful. This was her mother who had sung lullabies between coughing fits and taught her the secrets within modeling clay.

None of this was going to happen anymore.

Why was none of this going to happen?

Her father, awkward as he was, barely managed to get her out of the room before she vomited over the tile, but not before she had heard a comment, a rather thoughtless comment.

"Perhaps this was just fate. My sincerest apologies."

Somehow, those words hurt more than the fact that her mother was gone. Was fate something equivocal to god?

It must have been, because her mother would have been here longer, much, much longer, if it had been up to her, who had always prayed to the powers above.

If it had been up to her, her mother would never have been sick. But she had been, and that was the end of it.

As she dry-heaved over the toilet bowl, Juri thought of the worn puppet she kept in her backpack. She hardly used it anymore, though she rarely kept it from her person either. It was a clumsily made toy, made by shaking hands with felt. But it had been her mother's gift, and parting with it before parting with her seemed wholly inadequate.

Now that she was gone... could she keep it still?

The idea of its absence, of both of their absences, made her stomach roil, though there was nothing in it. She stuck her head between her knees, wanting tears, wanting the emptiness that came with tears.

They did not come, no matter how much she sniffled and tried to recall the odor of sulfur dangerously close to her nostrils, no matter how many sad, sad things she brought to the forefront of her heart, her mother's smile kept eclipsing them and banishing the urge away.

"It's not fair," she said softly. "Life isn't fair."

She left the bathroom moments later, dry-eyed with a ripped-up honey yellow dress, and her father held out his hand. It didn't shake, but she guessed it should have been because her father-

_(never did enough, was always worrying but never doing, and she got it from him)_

was sad just like she was and wanted to cry like she did but they were both absolutely terrible at it. So they didn't cry. Instead they gave respectful nods and bows and murmured the right words until they were in the car.

"What do we do now?" she asked him on the way home.

Her father looked at the streets and away from her, out of fear maybe, or out of love. "We go home, and we prepare to say goodbye properly," he said in the quiet burr that made her think of bundling in thick jackets. "Then we get ready for the end of your vacation and you go to school."

She shook her head. "Just like that?"

"... That's all we can do."

Juri kind of wanted to scream at him, scream and tug at his arm and pull them off the road into a ditch that may even kill them. It wouldn't be so bad. She would be up in the heavens and able to yell at God and then be scolded by her mother for letting go so easily.

But would that last part be such a bad thing? She didn't know, she couldn't.

She still wanted to do it.

But... that was too risky. And it would hurt her father. And no matter how much-

_(he deserved to pay, he needed to say something other than that, not act like everything would be normal again because normal was on that gurney-)_

she hurt, hurting him would be out of the question because what if he lived? What if he lived and she didn't? He would be so sad and all alone and nobody deserved that.

And besides... what if _she _survived?

Then she would be alone. And destroyed, probably.

_If it all disappeared, you would be fine._

She ignored this thought because it didn't sound like her voice. She ignored it because there was no reason to listen to something that didn't sound like her, especially since she was so tired, and so cold. Juri still wanted to cry, but she decided not to... it would make her father stop driving... and they really needed to be home.

It wasn't a dream. She knew it wasn't one.

There was no point in wishing it was.

So she would sleep.

Outside the car, childlike voices would giggle and sing, flying over their car and making the power lines spark. And the tires would briefly bounce on the road as they passed through an odd patch of sparkling gravel. Juri would not notice, maybe not even care if she did. But something would spark, and in her tiny bag, something rectangular and blue would slip itself into her wallet and wait.


	2. Episode Two

_**A/N:**_Updating this as I write episode three! Please let me know what you think. This is my first full-length attempt at Juri and she's an interesting character. :D

* * *

_Episode Two_

The funeral happened on her mother's favorite type of weather: gentle sun, slight clouds, and a warm breeze. A peaceful day. It was perfect.

Except for the sobbing.

Juri didn't pay it much mind. Her eyes had dried yesterday, after the wake. Her father had not cried at all. She wouldn't dare disappoint him any further.

Though after today, she would never wear black again if she could help it. Even her ribbon was black.

Give her summer yellows and light greens again. Give her the hardy family colors again.

It was hard not to fidget, hard to not shift away from her father's strong hand near her arm, hearing the relative she had _barely even heard of _cry and whisper and make comments about things she could never even care about.

The only ones that registered were those of her grandfather, who was always rather stoic behind an old clock grin until now, but currently was weeping like the cement dam in his chest was bombed. She wished she could reach out to him, or at least offer a tissue, but her hands remained fisted in her lap, bunching the fabric of her dress. Her old grandfather had survived a war, and many battles with few wet eyes, but she was comforted by the fact that this was a field no one knew how to walk.

She didn't really remember when they had gone to see her body burned or really recognize that she was picking bones from ashes. The bones were not her mother. That wan photograph wasn't her mother.

Her mother was just memories of hacking coughs and sticky forehead kisses, proud sweaty fingerprints on her grade reports and sparse hours spent in the spring garden planting her mother's bulbs.

And yet...

_And yet what?_

Her fingers slipped into her purse, touching the coarse puppet felt and breathing deeply, as if there weren't tears trying to rise.

She finally reached for her grandfather's hand, and let him walk her home. When his tears tapered off, he was silent, and so was Juri.

They didn't get home for two hours, and that was okay because the sun was warm and the clouds were quiet and Juri thought she could hear mother's voice.

...

The rest of her vacation was a blur of learning new things she didn't realize were life lessons you learned at an older age until now.

The first was giving the right kind of smile, even when you didn't want to smile.

It wasn't hard, though she thought it would be the most difficult thing to do. Smiling when you weren't happy sounded like it would hurt your lips. But all it took to do it was to remember that someone else had to be happy for some reason, so you could use their reason to be happy too.

Soon, she became a master at it.

The second thing she realized was that her father was awkward with things like love and affection and had no clue how to raise her. He was a working father, and he was a kind father who tried so very hard, but he was still a father and still a man, and one of the first things Juri had learned from her mother was that men were so much more outwardly clumsy than women and it couldn't be helped that they didn't always get things right. So without much thought, she took over household chores and began learning how to sew.

Following a basic recipe, learning what to buy and how to know when to buy it... that was lesson three.

Lesson four was a failure, always a failure.

She could not stop mourning her mother.

It was easy to not think of the picture in the shrine, to walk past it like it didn't exist. It wasn't easy to walk past the closed door of too many story times in a dark room with painted-on stars. It wasn't easy to ignore the phantom beeps of too many machines and the clacking of dropped pills from clumsy fingers or wet coughs and sobs in the early morning and a constant changing of sheets and fake smiles passed over a dinner table.

The two of them didn't even eat dinner together anymore.

At least she still found comfort in the smell of flowers.

Flowers, cleaning supply scent, the blood from knife cuts at her fingers from a failed carrot cut.

She wanted to cut her hair, shave it off, but her father's eyes kept the scissors from her head.

She knew at night, when the drink was lower than usual and her father's door was shut, that she was a memory he did not want to have.

_He should have been okay with it, he knew._

Juri had known too, and look what a difference that made for her.

She loved her father. She loved him and his awkward forehead kisses as she turned off his desk lamp or his books sitting in front of her door. She loved the cookbooks left open each morning and the way he tried to smile at the stories she made up in the backyard despite being a big kid.

She loved her father, but she hated him too.

Because Juri was so very lonely and so very alone.

...

Sometimes she smelled women in their house.

They had strong perfume, walked with heeled shoes left primly at the entrance to their home. They would sit with her father and talk, and give her a polite little smile every time she passed. Business talk, tavern talk. None of it was interesting, not as much as work and quiet chopping and knowing the right smell of the beer.

"Papa," she would say as she left them tea. "Kazuhara-san finished inventory. The _sake_ is low."

The woman's lips would always curl whenever she said anything pertaining to the work, and they would look at her father differently. And she would say nothing more, do nothing but smile.

She was supposed to be a nice girl, a pure girl who stayed out of the way.

Juri knew better.

Her father needed her.

She would be happy if he needed someone else too... because there was only so much she could do on her own. There was only so long she could be alone. But did she want anybody else? Would they be good to her father? To her?

Could she have another-

No. No, no, _no_.

No other mother, no one. She couldn't have another one, they died, they died too easily.

_Everyone dies too easily._

No.

She shook her head, scrubbed her face, banished the thoughts. She had to be strong. She had to be tough.

But girls were weak, women were weak. They couldn't be tough... could they?

Women weren't lions, were they?

_I have to try._

If she broke while Papa was still broken...

Juri looked at her puppet, the puppet she put in her mother's chair at every meal she ate at the table, and smiled. It was watery and weak and fake and it hurt to wear.

She went to her mother's shrine, and lit incense to the wan smile. Then, fingers shaking, she took her puppet and placed it below. Her fingers moved to the lighter, as if to burn it too, but.. she flicked her thumb at the lighter and missed. She tried again and her eyes misted over.

"Hehe... too soon," she murmured, and put it down. "I'm sorry, Mama," she said softly. "I'm trying. I'm _trying..._"

Too many lessons in too little time and no matter how well she acted there was no way she could learn them all.

"I'm sorry," she repeated at the sound of her father sliding the door open.

Then, pulling on a bright smile, she went to the kitchen to start the rice cooker.


	3. Episode Three

_**A/N:** _This would have been out earlier, but I honesty forgot that I keep these chapters as short as I do. Anyway, here we go! Enjoy and let me know what you think! There are notes at the end of this chapter, quick cultural notes.

* * *

Episode Three

"Katou-san!"

The end of vacation brought about the beginning of the next term, and it could not have come any sooner. But at the same time, there was enough to do at home that she wanted, desperately so, to have another month. None of this showed on her face, however, and she gave the bakery boy a kind smile. "Good morning, Takato-kun!"

He was a good boy, a nice boy with red eyes who was a little shy but his mother made nice bread and never gave her a pitying, _poor-dear-stuck-with-just-her-father _look and his father knew the exact cream puff she loved on a sad Friday night and that put them on her list of people to smile at.

He barely managed to catch up with her, for she had taken up running in the last three weeks of her break, and enjoyed a greater burst of speed than ever before. "Did you have a good summer, Katou-san?"

For a moment, the angry words were at her tongue, but then she remembered, _what happens at home, stays at home(1), _and smiled, giving a polite, mannered shake of her head. "Very quiet, mostly. I spent a lot of time with homework and chores. How about you, Takato-kun?"

He flushed, possibly at the fact that she abandoned the use of his last name (2) (by his mother's request, otherwise, she would have been formal enough to continue with the polite gesture, even though his given name rolled off much better than that) and then shook his head himself. "Just played games with Kenta and Hirokazu... and helped my parents at the bakery... my vacation wasn't very exciting either."

"Is that why you're on time today?" The teasing note left her lips before she realized what she was doing or saying, though in that part of her mind that was happy to be back in school, there was relief in the mischief, a small safe haven. He flushed with guilt and perhaps even twiddled his thumbs a little. She didn't have to laugh, because the embarrassment in his face was earnest and seemed to do it for her.

"I-I'm usually rather punctual, Kato-san..."

"Except when you're playing that new card game, right?" They started to walk together, and she clasped her hands behind her back by formal reflex, turning back to hear his answer. She knew bits and pieces of the game, it apparently having had an utter boom in popularity since the conclusion of the second season only weeks before. Everyone wanted to have a Digimon, even if it was just on a small monitor, they wanted to be a _Chosen Child_ too.

To be honest, Juri thought it was rather cute. Her mother would have liked it and encouraged her to play.

Takato flushed. "_Digimon _is really fun," he defended, pink embarrassment almost brushing his ears. "I can almost beat Hirokazu now."

"But can you get higher grades than Kenta-kun on summer homework?"

Takato pouted. "Of course!" They laughed at each other for a moment, passing through the school gates. "Neh, Katou-san, have you played _Digimon_ yet?"

"I've never seen a card," Juri admitted with a shy smile. She hadn't had much time to play or run around for anything but errands. She had passed display after display in toy store windows, seen advertisements of cards and the computer games. It would be rather nice to play, but her father needed her at the restaurant.

Takato, however, seemed to take this as the ultimate travesty. "R-Really?"

She twirled a piece of hair around one finger. "Really."

"That... that's not fun at all." He flushed as he trailed off, and Juri belatedly realized that there was probably a much worse statement that he could have said but didn't. They walked into the school building, finding their shoe lockers (3). Juri couldn't help but smile sympathetically at the look on Takato's face when he moved to untie his shoe and one of his bag pockets spilled out, revealing a small deck of green and blue cards. She moved to help him, only to be brushed aside by a passing student. She stumbled and almost smacked her head into a nearby locker.

"Sorry, Katou-san," Takato apologized, looking morose and flicking a reproachful look up towards the passing student, who hadn't even seemed to notice.

Juri only laughed a little more, and finished stacking up the cards. "It's a-okay," she said, standing up and wiping potential dirt from her dress. "It wasn't like I skinned my knees, did I?" She frowned, looking to check.

"N-No, of course not!" He took the cards from her gratefully. "Thanks! Hirokazu would have teased me for days..."

Juri straightened again with a small nod, going to finish untying her shoes and replace them with the slippers. She tried not to tap her foot as he meticulously reorganized each card to its proper place. But there was only so much patience she could afford to have when there was a morning assembly in ten minutes and they didn't even know who their homeroom teacher was!

"Takato-kun," she finally tried and he nodded hurriedly.

"S-Sorry!" He put the deck away and went to quickly change his shoes. _His mother must houn__d him about that a lot, _she thought to herself. A bitter bile rose up in her throat and she swallowed it because thinking in such a way would ruin her mother's smile.

There was nothing wrong with other people having mothers of their own, no matter how much she missed hers. Cursing them would not bring her back. Besides, who would dare wish to curse Takato-kun?

_Whoever cursed you, perhaps?_

That would be simply cruel.

"Ah, Katou-san?"

Takato was fidgeting as he walked. A part of her wondered why he hadn't fallen yet. Truth be told, Juri was a little concerned. It was a new year, was there really something to be nervous about?

"What is it, Takato-kun?"

He fumbled for words a moment. Then he smiled a little. "Are you free after class? I could, well, show you how to play." Takato then winced and raised his hands, adding a jumbled up set of words. "O-Of course if there's something else, we can wait, but I thought, that it would kind of be fun and-"

This time, Juri failed at muffling her giggles. "Sure, Takato-kun, I don't mind... if we can get to class first."

His smile widened and Juri thought for a moment that she had made his day a little. "Yeah!"

If he walked with a spring in his step after, she chose not to comment.

* * *

Cultural Notes:

(1) _what happens at home, stays at home_- A part of Japanese culture is an incredible focus on dignity and solving domestic or personal problems yourself and not bothering someone else with them. If Juri were to say something without express prompting, it would be considered rude and shameful.

(2) use of his last name- It's considered polite to refer to an acquaintance by last name (with honorific) until you get to know them better. That Takato's mother lets Juri call her son by first name is implying further closeness, but Takato continues to call her by her last name with a neutral honorific, to show his respect, and thus slight distance, from her.

(3) shoe lockers- in Japanese schools, students are required to switch their outdoor shoes for indoor shoes, which are sometimes provided by the school. It's for neatness, and to keep any outside dirt from cluttering the inside of the school.

If any of these concepts are incorrect, please let me know! I do my research, but any further help is appreciated!


End file.
